Lessons Learned on 10 years of Drawing Everyday

I’m going to share with you my journey of drawing everyday for the last 10 years. Even when sick, tired, vacationing, and when really didn’t want to. I kept at it and have some reflections on the time I’ve spent.

I started drawing when I was young. I was always fascinated by monsters, dragons and anime. Especially things which had more limps then is reasonable. Below are a few childhood drawings and some redos I’ve done. I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn’t really trained. I just picked up a pencil and a sketchbook and started copying images from books and TV shows I liked. Eventually my perfectionism started getting in the way. Without the knowledge of fundamentals any time I tried to make something original the gap between what I saw on the page and what was in my head was too frustrating to bear. So eventually I completely stopped.

It wasn’t until college and reading the book called the power of habit did I get back into it. The book goes over many features of habit formation but one of the key ones is consistency. Where the goal is to be able to mark an X on the calendar each and every day. With that goal, I picked up my childhood obsession again and as the number climbed so did my motivation to keep it going. Until I reached today of 10 years. I want to go over my 3 reflections of this time I’ve spent.

The first is Taking Life less seriously: I’m a recovering perfectionist. It was painful to look at how “bad” my art was every single day for many years. But that constant exposure took the bite out of it over time. I eventually came to be okay with just having fun drawing what I felt like and leaving it as a sketch and not worrying about making it a finished piece. Not everything needs to be a masterpiece. Not every session needs to see improvement. The improvement comes overtime with trial and error while you build up your skills. Here is the first one I did at the start and a redrawing a few years ago.

Second, Prioritizing your life: It’s all to easy to let life happen and go with the flow towards a path that isn’t right for you. Now for me I’m most alert, creative and productive in the morning. Normally I woke up and started getting ready for work then immediately headed out. By the time I’d come home I was tired and not interested in any hobby or anything other than sitting down and zoning out. The drawing I did force myself to do was a drudge and not fulfilling. Because, I realized I was giving my best output all to work by organizing my day around it. With that in mind I slowly started organizing it around myself. I did this by getting up earlier in order to give my focus to the things that enriched my life like the drawing and creating. Getting up the 20 minute earlier so I could do my sketch started off the day with a win towards the life I wanted. While still being able to perform at work. Probably even better. Now it is a fun cornerstone of my morning and gets me warmed up for the day. With creative solutions to deep important questions like:

Finally Self acceptance: I learned to accept I have a personal style that I don’t need to get away from. It isn’t bad that my natural output is different than another’s. It is perfectly fine to not draw landscapes and only make things I am interested in.

These are some of the lessons I learned from my Sisyphean task of drawing everyday for 10 years. It has been tough and I hope it inspire you to prioritize what’s important, take life less seriously, and accept yourself as you pursue your own passions in life. Thanks for reading.

Here is a link to most of them: https://imgur.com/gallery/VfWL6Cc

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